Visitation

The aisles marked our trip
down past the pews

At her final anchored spot
I saw above her head

a red balloon, its ribbon held
in the mouth of a crane.

The slim beak broke the flight,
tethering it just above

her velvet dress, splattered in lilies,
the one she wore on my birthday.

Mother said she was far
too shiny. Her thinned forehead

plastered with opaque grease.
And Auntie vomited and shook

at the sight of her little hands
folded over a taut belly.

Brother didn’t want to look
and veiled his eyes. Peering

through the vents of his fingers 
to catch a glimpse of her.

Yet she was beautiful. Her hair,
untangled, lay at her shoulders

and fell down her chest, covered 
in crushed velvet, pressed with care.

Once labored, her breath sat still.
And the crane bobbed its head

and shook the balloon in its bill
as it would a shrimp, ready

to consume the air-filled
pocket of dream. Reaching

to fill the space between,
I grabbed the string

from the mouth of the fine-boned bird.
It didn’t resist. The twine slipped

and rested in the meat of my hand.
I felt the pull upward, the desire

to leave this place. The buoyancy 
of that little balloon pulling, pushing

me to open my fingers. To let
the twine sail, and soar, and rest

again in the forests.
Past the sewing factory,

the church in Cincinnati, 
and the beaches in Guam, where she

had slept long before she made
her home here—the never-home.

The dream sat in my hands. I felt it
wishing to ascend back to the place

filled with dew and rain. To return
to the zoos on the coast,

the streets of Saigon
where she could rest,

knowing that, finally,
she had returned.